


Lights Up

by myth_taken



Series: Who Needs Magic When We Have High School [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8606113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myth_taken/pseuds/myth_taken
Summary: Willow is the lighting designer for the school musical. Tara is playing the third youngest Von Trapp kid. The rest is history.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is set in my high school AU... some things: Oz had to move away about a month before this starts. Tara and Willow both have roughly the same family situations as in canon, but Tara's mom is alive. I have a lot of headcanons for theatre at Sunnydale High, but I'm going to put them in the notes at the end because they're not quite relevant.

One of Willow's favorite places was the tech booth in the school theater. She had initially discounted the idea of theatre due to stage fright, but a senior had noticed how good she was at computers, and they had come to Willow and told her that she might like to run lights for the shows. So now she was the lighting designer, and she loved it; it was like an oasis in the middle of a busy school. She'd met Oz in the tech booth, too, back when he did sound, but he’d moved away, and now she was all alone, and she didn’t know who’d be doing sound.

Still, Willow loved the tech booth. By the time she was finally needed for The Sound of Music in mid-March, she was thrilled. She raced up the steps to the booth for her first rehearsal and put the headset on with the care of one placing a crown atop their head, then sat in her chair and watched the actors milling about down below. They were all flinging their backpacks onto theatre seats, laughing, chattering together, and suddenly, Willow wished she had friends in theatre. She had had Oz, of course, but Buffy would never go near the plays, and Xander hated singing, and Jesse was more into basketball, and now she didn’t even have Oz.

She was brought out of this by a voice behind her. “Is this where I’m supposed to go?”

She turned around. Angel was standing behind her, looking surprisingly unsure of himself. She had never seen him this far away from his friends.

“Sorry, I’m the new sound guy.” Angel shrugged. “Lorne said I should try it when I didn’t get cast.”

Willow glanced back down at the actors, still milling about. “Lorne?”

“Yeah, he’s a good friend.” Angel looked around. “So, uh, where do I sit?”

Willow pointed to the chair next to her. “I’m not very good on sound,” she apologized. “I can help a little bit, but you’re going to have to figure it out yourself mostly.”

Angel stared at the sound board in confusion. “Okay. Um.” He slid the master volume all the way up. Willow lunged to slide it back down.

“That’s a bad idea,” she said. “Unless you want some major earache.” She paused, fidgeting with her hands. “You don’t want major earache. Unless you do, secretly, and you’ve never told anybody, which is just weird, and also if that’s true, I think I have to get you out of here.”

“No, no earache,” Angel said, backing away from the sound board. “Do you know anything about how to do this?”

Willow nodded. “See, this is the volume for all the microphones,” she said, pointing at the master volume. “And these are all individual microphones. See how the stage manager has already labeled them with who has them?”

Angel nodded, approaching the sound board slowly.

Willow continued in her explanation, stopping only when the director’s words started coming to her through her headset. “Can we get lights down?”

Willow moved a slider, and the lights went down. Next to her in the darkness, she could see Angel staring at her in confusion. She motioned for him to put on his headset, and he did, taking his place at the sound board.

The first tech rehearsal was always long. This one was even longer, mostly because they had to train Angel on every single sound cue. Still, it was worth it just to watch the actors on the stage, sometimes bumbling around in confusion, but sometimes shining with charisma.

And then there was one girl, playing one of the Von Trapp kids (Willow got them all mixed up), who wasn't either of those things. Willow spent the whole rehearsal between light cues trying to figure out what she was, and she finally came up with quietly competent. The girl wasn't full of confidence or anything; she was just plain good at what she did.

After rehearsal, Willow stayed up in the booth to organize it a little; somebody else had used it over the summer, and everything was out of place. Angel stayed, too, mostly out of a desire to help, but he didn't know what to do, so he was mostly just leaning against the wall, which was more like what Willow was used to from him.

Everything was almost put away when Willow heard footsteps from the stairs. She turned around to see the door open, and through it came the girl she had been noticing earlier. She was a little taller closer up, and her hair was more obviously dyed blonde. Her presence was diminished; she shrank back from the rest of the room, and she looked more at the floor than at the people in the booth.

“Um, hi,” she said. “I, um, I just, I know you guys do a lot of work, and I just wanted to come up and say thank you, I guess.” She had a stutter, so when she said “thank you,” it came out more like “th- thank you.” She sounded a little bit like she was saying words that she had memorized, too, and Willow guessed she probably had memorized what she wanted to say before she had come up. When she finished, she looked up and smiled a little bit, and that made Willow happy in a way she couldn’t quite describe.

“Well, um, welcome to the tech booth,” Willow said. “We have lots of entertaining switches and sliders up here. And Angel. We have Angel.”

Angel waved.

“And me,” Willow continued. “I’m Willow, and I’ve been doing the lights since last year, when I was a freshman, who, you know, liked doing lights, and I’m rambling now, aren’t I?”

The girl smiled again. “I- I’m Tara.” She held out her hand. “Nice to m- meet you.”

“You’re really good,” Willow blurted. She looked around frantically for someone to save her from this awful, awkward conversation, but Angel was the only person there, and she had barely heard him talk until that day. “I mean, I was watching, and you’re really good.”

“I could never do what you guys have to do,” Tara said.

Willow shook her head. “Trust me, I’m nothing special. I just turn the lights on and off.”

“No, you are,” Tara insisted. “We— we’d be nothing without you.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t even _exist_ without you,” Willow answered, “so I think you win.”

Angel looked between Willow and Tara, kicked himself off the wall, and waved a halfhearted goodbye. “See you later,” he said.

“See you,” Willow answered. “Hey, I’ll show you how to work the God mic tomorrow, huh?”

Angel didn’t stick around long enough to respond. Willow turned her focus back to Tara.

“I’m going to leave now,” Willow said, “but do you want to come with me? You could probably come to my house for dinner, that is, if you don’t mind boxed macaroni and cheese. My parents aren’t exactly around much.”

Tara smiled. “No, I mean, I’d love to, but my dad’s kind of strict.”

“That’s okay,” Willow answered. “I’ll walk out with you, anyway.”

They walked down from the tech booth and through the school. Once they had gotten out of the theatre, Willow asked, “So, are you new? I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Yeah,” Tara answered. “I’m a s- sophomore. We just moved here from Indiana.”

“That’s far away,” said Willow. “I’ve been in Sunnydale my whole life. I can’t even imagine.”

Tara nodded. They were at the school doors now.

“Which way do you go?” Willow asked.

Tara shook her head. “A- actually, my dad picks me up,” she said, pointing to the only car in the parking lot. “So, um, I’ll see you later? In rehearsal tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Willow said. “Bye!”

“Bye.” Tara walked to her car. Willow watched her get in before she, too, walked away to her house.

The next day, Willow actually started rehearsal in the theatre, milling about with the actors. Mostly, she was milling about with Tara, though. She was astonished at how much Tara really _knew_ about theatre; everything she had to say was interesting and informative. Willow felt boring in comparison, but when she said that, Tara assured her she wasn’t.

“No, you’re— I think you’re probably one of the most interesting people I know.”

Willow shook her head. “No way. There are so many people better than me. My friend Buffy is awesome at karate, and my friend Xander is just really funny, and I’m just Willow.”

Tara looked at her. “I think I like just Willow.”

Just then, the director called places, and Willow scurried away up to the light booth, where she found Angel looking slightly more competent and aware of what he was doing than he had been the day before. She put on her headset and began the show again.

Afterwards, she went back down and found Tara again. She was thrilled to have a friend, and there was something special about Tara. Some spark, some quality that made Willow want to be around her more. And she was a brilliant actor. All the other actors were trying too hard to be noticed, but Tara was just doing what she had to do to make the show better, which, in the end, also made her more noticeable.

Every night, Willow spent all her free time at rehearsal with Tara, and every night after rehearsal, she asked again if Tara wanted to go to her house for dinner, and every night, Tara repeated the same thing about her dad being strict. Willow was almost jealous; _her_ dad was out of town all the time. He was _never_ strict.

Finally, it was opening night. Everyone involved had a few hours between school and when they had to be ready for the play, and almost no one was going home in between. Some people had brought food, and others were planning a group trip to the cheapest restaurant they could find, but Willow had asked Tara to come home with her in between.

“I— I told my dad I would stay at school the whole time,” Tara said. “He might check on me.”

“That’s not good,” Willow said. “It’s okay, though. I’ll just stick around with you.”

Tara’s face melted into a shy grin, and Willow smiled back.

So that was what happened. Willow took Tara up to the light booth and showed her what all the buttons did, and Tara took Willow onstage and showed her what it looked like to be up there during a show. They spent a few hours sitting up in the tech booth talking; Angel was nowhere to be found. He had gone out, probably, with his friends, many of whom were in the cast, and Willow was grateful; she didn’t really need him bumbling around trying to remember how to turn on the speakers.

Tara had to leave all too soon, and before she left, Willow impulsively hugged her. “It’s for luck,” she said, and Tara left smiling. Willow went back to her seat, now running through her cues, making sure everything worked exactly as it should.

It did, and that left her with an hour left before the show. She asked the stage manager through her headset if there was anything left that she had to do, and once she had ascertained that there wasn’t really anything left that she had to take care of, she left the tech booth and went backstage.

It was a mess. She hadn’t really been backstage before a show before, and she was immediately overwhelmed. Everyone was running around, yelling about their costumes, trying to put on makeup, trying to find their props, and worrying about anything and everything. Willow turned to leave, but then she saw Tara, a point of calmness in the middle of the chaos, sitting against a wall, looking up at everyone. She was wearing heavy stage makeup, featuring more eyeliner than Willow really thought advisable, and her costume of a long dress. Willow went over and sat down next to her. Tara turned her head to look at her.

“I thought you had to be in the booth,” she said. “Running cues or something like that.”

“I took care of it already,” Willow answered. “So I thought maybe I would come down here and see what it’s like, but I’m beginning to regret that decision, because it’s very loud and overwhelming, and I don’t really do loud and overwhelming.”

Tara shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Everyone’s yelling, but you get used to it. I just try to stay out of the dressing room. I go in there to change, but everyone’s playing really loud music, and they all like to complain about everything.”

Willow looked around. “It looks like everyone out here is complaining, too.”

“No, this is short-term issues. In the dressing room, they’re all talking about how the director did something wrong three weeks ago and stuff like that. Really, it’s much better out here.”

Willow shrugged. “This is why I’m not an actor,” she said. “It’s very quiet up in the tech booth.”

Suddenly, everybody yelled, “Thank you, fifteen,” all at once.

“Oh.” Tara looked up. “Thank you, fifteen!” she yelled.

Willow stared at her. “That was really weird.”

“Fifteen minutes until warm-ups,” Tara explained. “When someone says there’s a certain amount of time until something or whatever, you have to yell back the amount of time. Like when there’s a five minute break, we all yell, ‘Thank you five.’ It’s so that everyone knows what’s going on.”

“Huh. That’s really weird.” Willow paused to think about it. “But it makes sense.”

“It works,” Tara said. “Now we all know that there are warm-ups in fifteen minutes.”

Willow cast about for something else to talk about. “Is your dad coming tonight?”

Tara shook her head. “No. He doesn’t like theatre. He thinks it’s foolish to pretend to be somebody else. My mom wanted to come, but he wouldn’t let her. Something about teaching me proper values.”

“How come he lets you do it, then?” Willow asked.

“He thinks I might make friends or something. But I don’t really like other actors. I just like singing, really. And saying lines.” Tara paused. “I guess I really like being somebody else.”

Willow was quiet. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she reached over and took Tara’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “Theatre is pretty cool. And you’re really good at it.”

One side of Tara’s mouth went up in a grin. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ve got a long way to go, though. I’m only a sophomore. I’m not nearly as good as Fred or Lorne or anybody.”

Willow tried to remember who Fred was. She had a vague notion of Fred playing the oldest Von Trapp, the one who had the sixteen going on seventeen song. She was one of the few actors who didn’t try to take over the whole stage every time she was on, which Willow did appreciate. “Fred’s good,” she said, “but you’re just as good. And Lorne overdoes it a little bit.”

Tara laughed. “One time, we were learning a dance, and he knocked everybody over in rehearsal by stepping too far forward when he had a solo. Like, literally knocked them over.”

Willow giggled. “That’s hilarious.”

“Fred’s actually the closest thing I have to a friend in the cast,” Tara admitted, “but she’s got so many other friends, and they’re all scary and seniors.”

“Tell me about it,” Willow answered. “At least you don’t have to sit in that tech booth with Angel the whole show.”

“Does he talk?” Tara asked. “Like, ever?”

“Only when he has to ask me how to turn on the sound board,” Willow said.

Suddenly, everyone was yelling, “Thank you, warm-ups!” and evacuating the space. Willow jumped up.

“I’ve got to go get everything set up.” She grinned. “And, you know, help Angel turn on the sound board.”

Tara stood up too. “And I really do need a warm-up,” she said. “My voice is kind of dying.”

“Oh, no,” Willow said. “I like your voice.”

Tara smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be there long enough for the show.”

Willow scurried back up to the tech booth, still thinking about the fact that Tara’s family wasn’t going to come to see her. She resolved to buy Tara flowers; usually, parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles would buy kids flowers, but obviously Tara’s family wasn’t up to the task, so Willow had to take matters into her own hands.

The show went well, and so did the next four. Willow was thrilled; there was nothing better than a show that left the audience clapping and cheering at the end. Of course, that was probably at least in part because everyone in the audience had kids in the show, but that was okay. There was still a certain thrill that Willow got at the end.

Closing night was always her favorite. The show was always the best, since everyone remembered more and more lines as the show wore on, and there was always a certain amount of camaraderie that came through when the actors knew that it was their last chance to perform together. It was kind of hard to light things better than they had been lit before, but Willow was even more on top of her cues than usual.

And when the curtain went down for the last time, she brought the house lights up, pulled a bouquet out from under her chair, and rushed backstage, where she found Tara wiping her makeup off with a handheld mirror.

“Hey,” she said. Tara looked up. “Um, I felt really bad that your family doesn’t come, so I got you these.” She held out the bouquet. “I figured I’d give them to you now, because, you know, if your dad doesn’t believe in theatre, he probably really doesn’t believe in a cast party.”

Tara stood up, her mouth open in surprise. “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” she said. “It’s okay, really.” She began to smile. “Actually, I kind of got you flowers too. I figured no one really does that for techs, and it’s not fair, because you guys kind of make the show happen.” She stood up and disappeared into the dressing room, coming out a moment later with a bouquet of roses. She handed them to Willow.

“Oh, no, I didn’t need— you didn’t have to—“ Willow gave up and hugged Tara, taking care not to crush any flowers. When they pulled away, Willow said, “You had better still talk to me even though the show’s over, okay?”

Tara nodded. “I— I’ll do my best,” she said.

“I’ll find you in the cafeteria,” Willow promised. “We can talk about why theatre involves so much eyeliner or something.”

Tara laughed. “Bye, Willow.”

“Bye, Tara,” Willow said, and she left with a tiny smile on her face.

**Author's Note:**

> As promised, your headcanons: Andrew is playing Gretl, the youngest Von Trapp kid, because he is the smallest freshman and his voice hasn't changed. He hates it. Fred is Liesl, and she spends most of her time onstage flirting with Lorne and most of her time offstage flirting with Wesley, who is student directing. Wesley is that one student director who's only there because he wants to be a film director when he's older, and he's very pretentious and doesn't actually care much about theatre. None of Willow's friends are really into theatre, but they all come to support her. Afterwards they say things like, "Wow, good show. Those lights sure did go on and off." The loud music in the dressing room is Cordelia's fault; she's a terrible actor, but she gets into the shows because her mom is the asshole parent who calls in to complain about things. I still don't know who's director or stage manager because there aren't many adults on the show who aren't already represented in this AU (like, Joyce is still Buffy's mom, Giles and Jenny are still librarian and computer science teacher respectively, etc.).


End file.
